Giving Thanks
by XiaoDui
Summary: Jazz has a little something to say at dinnertime. Danny and Jazz sibling fluff, prize fic for The Scarlet Pencil - and Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!


Every Thanksgiving, my family gathers around the table as if we were normal. We share food, laugh, tell stories, and eat non-ectoplasmic food – just like any other family. Each family differs slightly, though, in that each has their own little traditions.

I mean, sure – some traditions are similar to each other. A lot of people eat turkey, others eat ham (unless you're like my brother's ultra-recyclo-vegetarian friend, in which case you eat tofu no matter what). Some will have only the immediate family in attendance, while some have distant relatives come in for food. Others will catch up with each other during dinner, too.

My family's tradition? Standing up and saying what you're most thankful for.

I've put a lot of thought into what I'm most thankful for this year, and I'm glad I came to the conclusion that I have.

My little brother . . . he's famous, now. He saved the entire world from the Disaster-oid, after all; it's kinda hard to keep a low profile after such a heroic deed. However, that's not why I've focused on him this year. It's not because he's a hero, either, not entirely. I mean, sure – it's great that he saves lives every day. He's even saved mine! That's certainly enough to be thankful for.

Sure, he's my hero . . . but for an entirely different reason.

The main reason why I'm so thankful for him this year doesn't have much to do with his ghost powers at all, but it still makes him a hero in my mind.

Almost ten months ago, I came home from school too miserable to even cry. The day had started off badly in the first place – my alarm hadn't gone off, the milk I poured on my cereal turned out to be ecto-contaminated and therefore inedible, and for once my brother had left before I had (which mean my back-up plan for getting to school on time wasn't available). The day had just gone downhill from there, the low point was when I opened the door to find that one of my parents' inventions had exploded in the living room.

Usually, whenever the living room gets coated in green ectoplasm, my little brother is the one to clean it up. He never complains; we've seen that the impure ectoplasm in our parents' inventions burns human skin on contact. Oftentimes, the only evidence I can find of an explosion even happening is faint scorch marks he wasn't quite able to clean away.

However, this time, my brother wasn't here to clean it up for me. He was serving a detention for missing a class (probably because of a ghost attack), and wouldn't be able to help. I was stuck with donning my gloves and getting to work.

My little brother was never able to show up to help me clean up all the ectoplasm. I went to bed late that night covered in first and second degree burns, sore and aching and miserable. I was too tired to even cry, but I wasn't able to sleep because of the pain. All I could do was curl up on my bed, depressed beyond depression.

I couldn't even move when I heard the muffled thump of my brother falling into his room through the wall. I remember hearing an exhausted shuffle down the hallway, and my door creaking open a sliver. Tired blue eyes – with just a hint of vibrant green under their surface – had blinked at me, and then widened before the same shuffle hurried back down the hallway.

Mere moments later, cold hands were gently stretching me out on my bed. Tears had sprung to my eyes from the pain, but they were instantly soothed away by a refreshing coolness being set on my back. Similar points of cold relaxed the back of my arms and legs, and before I knew it I had fallen asleep.

The rest of the night is just a blurry haze of coolness and sleep. I dimly remember being rolled over multiple times, the colder temperatures switching between my front and my back repeatedly. Otherwise, I slept soundly through the entire night, free of pain.

I woke up in the morning well-rested and much more cheerful. My less severe burns had been coated in mustard and then wrapped, the bandages staining a faint yellowish-brown from the condiment. I was lying on my back, and the more intense burns along my legs and arms had been covered with every icepack in the house – as well as a few plastic baggies filled with simple chunks of ice.

There was a movement to my side, and I turned – there was my little brother, sitting up from his slouched position in my desk chair. It had been pulled up to the side of my bed, and a cardboard carton of plastic baggies sat on the bedside table.

And my sweet, wonderful brother looked absolutely exhausted. Dark shadows under his tired eyes showed how little sleep he'd gotten, and he was still wearing his clothes from yesterday. However, I could see the evidence of his ghost fights; he had a nice bruise developing along his jaw, and more spotting his arms. Various cuts and scratches littered his frame, from what I could tell, and it looked like he had some nasty burns of his own. There was even a huge gash in his side – I could see the odd mix of blood and ectoplasm that ran through his system leaking into and staining his shirt.

Yet, he still sat there. It seemed like he'd watched over me all night, ignoring his own exhaustion and pain in order to take care of mine. It looked like he hadn't even bothered to try to bandage himself – and he was still using his power over ice to fill more plastic baggies, which he was even now in the process of switching with the thawed ones already on my legs.

When he noticed I was awake, he could have blamed me for his exhaustion. He could have held the fact that he took care of me all night over my head, but he didn't. Instead, he just smiled. Smiled, and said that he'd make me anything I wanted for breakfast.

I'd always known that my brother was a hero. But . . . it wasn't until that night that I really accepted it as a fact.

Heroes don't always have to have superpowers. Some heroes are like Batman, or that firefighter or policeman or soldiers. And then, there are the smaller heroes – the ones who just make someone's day just a little bit brighter. The ones that lift you up when you're feeling down, the ones that truly care and the ones that make you smile.

The ones like my brother.

So.

This year . . .

". . . I'm most thankful for my little brother. Danny, I love you."


End file.
